months to buy. Her hands were clenched around a tissue. When she saw Claire, her face crumpled in relief.
“Claire,” she breathed.
Claire walked straight into her arms.
For one moment, the lobby disappeared. She was not a bride. Not a spectacle. Not a woman standing on the edge of a family war. She was a daughter, and her mother smelled like lavender soap and rain.
“I’m okay,” Claire whispered. “I didn’t panic. Marina brought papers. Daniel knew.”
Linda pulled back.
There was no confusion in her face.
Only sadness.
“I know,” she said.
Claire blinked. “How?”
Linda opened her small silver purse and removed a folded photocopy.
“A waiter gave this to me. He said a young woman asked him to make sure I read it before anyone explained things to me.”
Elise.
Claire took the paper.
It was a copy of Marina’s handwritten notes, the words slightly crooked from being photographed or scanned in a hurry. Claire’s name was circled twice. So was her mother’s address. Beside a line about Claire’s father’s debts, Marina had written in narrow blue ink: potential liability disguised as romance.
For a second, Claire could not breathe.
Linda reached for the paper, saw the phrase, and closed her eyes.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
“She had no right,” Claire said.
“No,” Linda answered. Her voice was quiet, but not weak. “She didn’t.”
Sienna touched Claire’s shoulder. “What do you want to do?”
From the ballroom came a burst of raised voices. A man’s voice demanded privacy. Marina answered with a tone Claire recognized too well: controlled fury wrapped in manners.
Claire folded the paper carefully.
“I want her to say it in front of everyone.”
Sienna’s mouth curved slightly. “That’s my girl.”
The ballroom doors were partly closed. A hotel manager stood outside looking pale. When Claire approached, he straightened.
“Miss Bennett, perhaps we should find a private room—”
“No,” Claire said.
She pushed the doors open.
The ballroom was magnificent and awful.
White roses climbed the arch at the front. Candles flickered along mirrored tables. The cake stood in the corner, five tiers of sugar flowers waiting for a celebration that had been interrupted by truth. The guests turned as Claire entered, and silence spread from the nearest tables to the farthest wall.
Daniel stood near the arch with his jacket off and his tie hanging open. His face was pale. He looked as though he had aged ten years in twenty minutes.
Marina stood beside him, one hand gripping her clutch. Her brother Peter, a broad man with a red face, hovered near the attorney who had apparently been invited to a wedding like a loaded weapon.
When Marina saw Claire, relief flashed across her face.
It lasted less than a second.
Then she saw Linda and Sienna beside her.
“Claire,” Marina said, projecting warmth for the room. “Thank God. We were worried sick.”
Claire walked down the aisle slowly.
Not the way she had rehearsed.
No music swelled. No guests smiled. No father waited to kiss her cheek at the front. Her mother walked beside her instead, her posture straight, her hand linked through Claire’s arm.
When Claire reached the first row, she stopped.
“Were you worried,” she asked, “or were you busy telling people I was unstable?”
A murmur moved through the
